[mythtv-users] Choppy hd live tv playback with HD3000

Daniel Kristjansson danielk at cuymedia.net
Mon Dec 19 23:10:55 EST 2005


On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 19:44 -0800, Mark Johannessen wrote:
> On 12/19/05, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk at cuymedia.net> wrote:
> > The audio can often be addressed by turning on "Extra Audio buffering" in
> > the frontend settings, but sometimes requires the purchase of a new audio card.
> I was afraid that this might be a hardware problem.  I've tried
> turning on "Extra Audio buffering" and no change.  If it makes any
> difference, the sound and the video studder together and not
> independently (same rate, etc.)
It's really hard to tell what causes the problem on any particular
system. Generally people try swapping in an old audio card try using
the motherboard audio if they were using an sound card. I had one
motherboard that had the audio causes stuttering problem, and I
installed an old SoundBlaster audio card which cured the problem.
My current motherboard has built-in ICH5 audio and I haven't had
any problems with it.

> I'm sorry - what is "SVN"?  Does the ./configure relate to a kernel recompile?
SVN is the code repository for MythTV. There are directions for using it
at http://svn.mythtv.org  Generally I wouldn't recommend SVN to novice
users, but for HDTV there have been a lot of improvements since 0.18.1.

> > I recommend against using XvMC with nVidia cards for HDTV unless you can't
> > get MythTV to work without it. If you do need it, you need to enable it in
> > ./configure, and in the frontend settings under:
> >   "Setup"->TV Settings"->"Playback"->"Preferred MPEG2 Decoder"
> I don't see the "Preferred MPEG2 Decoder" on my system.  Does
> ./configure relate to a kernel recompile?
No ./configure relates to a MythTV recompile. The steps are:
./configure [configure options]
qmake
make
su [type root password]
make install

There are more directions in the docs at http://www.mythtv.org

If you can wait, I would guess the next release (0.19) will come before
the new year. But it most likely will not be compiled specifically
for you CPU, which you may need to get HDTV working. It only adds about
10 to 25% to the speed at which MythTV runs, depending on the CPU. But
that may make the difference between stuttering and not stuttering.

> I've installed almost everything from scratch using yum and I would
> hate to go manual unless absolutely necessary.  For me, it will be
> much simpler to ditch an incompatable nvidia and sound card than to go
> through another weekend of config hell - which I very likely would
> face if I tried to modify the kernel.
There is no need to modify the kernel, but you will most likely need to
uninstall the MythTV installed by yum, so that there are no conflicts.

> On that point, is there a listing anywhere of sound and display video
> cards that are known to work with myth and the HD3000, and hopefully
> the playback settings in myth to use?
No, not really. If you search the archives some cards and motherboard
audio that don't work well are mentioned. For display cards, nVidia
cards work pretty well, just not in XvMC mode with 1080i video. I
use one in XVideo mode everyday without problems (though I need to
use the 6629 drivers, rather than newer drivers, for it to use my
1920x1200 LCD at full resolution.)

-- Daniel



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